Bullies' Choice Brawl
by lolday-n-lolnight
Summary: When Isabella fails, once again, to attract Phineas' attention, she considers giving up entirely. But a chance encounter with Buford gives her an idea. If there's one thing she's learned from romantic comedies, it's that a poorly-conceived plan to trigger jealousy in the object of her affection is bound to succeed.


"Are you saying you won't go with me?" Isabella asked. Her lower lip quivered.

"Sorry, Isabella," Phineas responded without looking down from the bucket of the cherrypicker he was standing in. His big blue eyes that every night Isabella dreamed of falling into were instead glued to his work prying a bent nail out of a garish yellow board. The rest of the gang – Ferb, Buford, and Baljeet – were similarly busy tearing down the homemade stage they'd built for today's activity, a city-wide talent show. Only Isabella hadn't grabbed a hard hat and tools as the sun started to sink behind Danville's lonely mountain and it became clear that, unusually, the day's activity wouldn't be cleaning itself up. Instead she'd briefly tightened her hair bow, put on her cutest smile, and followed Phineas in an apparently fruitless attempt to once again ask him out on a date.

"It's not that watching a butterfly migration wouldn't be fun," the talkative redhead continued, oblivious to his friend's internal monologue. "It's just that Ferb and I already have plans."

That focused Isabella's attention like a camera lens. "Wait, you do?"

"Yeah, haven't you heard?" With a pop the bent nail came loose, causing Phineas to fall on his backside. The twenty-foot wooden structure quivered dangerously, then suddenly collapsed, landing in a neat pile of yellow lumber at Isabella's feet. Briefly Phineas disappeared from her view as he leaned over the opposite side of the bucket, calling out, "All done – bring me down, Ferb!" The vehicle shuddered into motion and, with a chorus of high-pitched beeps, slowly lowered him to the ground. Before Phineas could take even one step onto solid ground, though, Isabella was on him, glaring and tapping her fingers against her folded arms agitatedly.

"Haven't I heard _what_?"

Phineas pulled a wadded-up flyer out of his back pocket and handed it to Isabella. She glanced skeptically at him and unfolded it, revealing a startlingly handsome bald man posing in some sort of stylish red pajamas. He was flanked by several men and women in similar clothing, a few inexplicably wearing wrinkly prosthetic foreheads or exotically tinted contact lenses. Phineas explained, "Next month's the digital re-release of _Space Adventure VII: The Rise of the Return of the Curse of the Pygmalions_. It's without a doubt one of the best _Space Adventure _movies ever, and it even features Captain Johnny-Lou Petard – Ferb's favorite character!" The lanky preteen popped up over Phineas' shoulder with a thumbs-up before disappearing again, in typical Ferb fashion. "Naturally we've already got VIP tickets, but we might be able to pull a few strings and get you in too, Isabella."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "A digital re-release?"

"Yup!"

"So you've already seen this movie?"

"Maybe... twelve times? But only twice in theaters. Ooh and look – there's a costume contest! First place gets a hand shake from the director."

Isabella took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. "But Phineas, yesterday you said you didn't have any plans for July."

"Well it was only announced two hours ago," he admitted. "We've been hanging out all day, Isabella. You should've asked sooner."

"I tried, but every time I started to ask you, I got cut -"

"Hold that thought, Isabella," Phineas said suddenly, pushing his way past her. "Buford, what are you doing?!" he called out to an earth mover with a colorful collection of wooden boards in its scoop. "Don't mix the pine with the oak!"

Normally Isabella could keep calm even at her crush's most thick-headed moments, but this time she couldn't control herself. She flung the flyer in the mud and stamped on it with a pink shoe. "Phineas, you, you... heartbreaker!" she screamed and stomped out of the Flynn-Fletcher backyard before the shocked redhead could even open his mouth to reply.

* * *

Isabella sat on the step of her back door, crying into her hands just quietly enough so that the ambient neighborhood noise would muffle the sound. She could hear her mother humming from the open kitchen window, and the last thing she wanted right now was to be subjected to one of her mother's lectures about how she was too young to be thinking about romance, and anyway what about the nice Indian boy from a couple blocks down, wasn't his name Bujeet or something, she'd heard he got good grades and was planning to become a doctor!

Isabella sighed. She shouldn't have let her hopes get up about the butterfly plan. But Abuela's story had been so compelling. Last weekend Isabella had visited the old woman in the small apartment she lived in downtown, helping her bake a mountain of _enchiladas verdes_ for the upcoming family reunion as she told romantic stories of how Abuelo had wooed her sixty years ago.

She'd been playing hard to get, Abuela explained, and she'd been about to to turn down his offer to go watch the annual migration of the purple mottled-back queen butterflies, now endangered but at the time so numerous they could blot out the sun. But then she heard that he was planning on asking out her nemesis, Maria, if she turned him down again, so at the last minute she said yes. It was so late in the migratory season that they left on their mountain hike without checking to make sure their map was up to date, and naturally they got lost. The young couple ended up trapped, romantically, in a cave for two days and two nights as the purple gossamer wings of thousands of butterflies filled the air.

"After that, I knew we were meant to be together," she explained, sighing wistfully.

And if it could work for Abuela, why couldn't it work for Isabella too?

She should have known better. Phineas seemed to have a way of ruining every romantic thing he tried. From the tacky, classical music-smothered romantic dinner, to the ill-conceived rose-flavored Valentine's Day chocolates, to his utter obliviousness to the charms of Paris, romance seemed to be the one thing Phineas Flynn just couldn't do right.

Ah, Paris. Even with all the exhiliration of traveling around the world in a single day and actually beating the sun back home, Isabella couldn't forget the loneliness and disappointment of visiting the City of Love without a real, well, lover. Almost a year later, any reminiscence about Japan, the Himalayas, or any of their other destinations still unwillingly drudged up memories of that disastrous visit.

It didn't help any that that was when she'd first come up with a theory to explain Phineas' blindness toward her feelings for him. Sitting on a bench in Paris, unhappily watching a mime playfully ape going out for a romantic dinner with an invisible date while Phineas prowled restlessly about the park, she suddenly realized something.

Isabella had long come up with a system for asking Phineas out. No matter how much she dreamed or hoped that he would suddenly fall to one knee and confess his love for her, or that an otherwise mundane outing might suddenly turn romantic once separated from the rest of the gang, she always pitched her propositions in strictly friendly terms. She avoided the word "date" and though she was constantly coming up with excuses for why she and Phineas ought to spent time without the others, she refused to admit that she wanted to be alone with him.

Part of it was because Phineas was popular, and extroverted, and apparently never alone, and it was embarrassing enough asking your crush out without having to do it in front of everybody. But there was another, much more cowardly reason: as long as she never directly asked Phineas out, he could never directly turn her down. She'd long thought it a brilliant plan, but that sunny afternoon in France last year she'd suddenly realized it could be turned against her. If he knew how Isabella felt but didn't feel the same way, then he could spare her feelings by feigning ignorance instead of directly turning her down.

Just the thought of it elicited an extra loud sob and she buried her face in her knees, vainly shaking her head back and forth to dislodge the idea from her head.

The sound of a voice from just beyond her backyard fence made her freeze. "Isabella?"

She looked up. In her anger she'd slammed the gate shut behind her, causing it to bounce back open instead of latching properly, and now Buford was standing on the sidewalk outside her yard, staring through the gap. His face was covered in dirt and sweat, but Isabella could still plainly read concern and, rightly, embarrassment on it.

Deftly she wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes with her wrists. She folded her arms and stuck her nose up in the air like she smelled something rank. "What are _you_ doing here?" she demanded.

Buford rubbed the back of his head uncomfortably. "I was just, uh, walkin' home, and it sounded like maybe you was, uh, sweatin' through your eyes?"

Isabella narrowed her eyes into an icy glare. "Well I wasn't, so you can just get out of here."

Still the preteen hesitated, shifting his weight from one tree-trunk sized leg to the other. He opened his mouth and closed it again several times, as if he was chewing a particularly tough piece of gum. "But if you was – theoretically speakin' – you know you could always talk to one of us, right?"

She cocked her head and raised an eyebrow coolly, but inwardly she was surprised and more than a little confused about the direction the conversation seemed to be taking. "Like you?"

"Well, yeah," Buford said, eyes wide with surprise. "I mean, we're friends, ain't we?"

Before she could respond, another voice interrupted from behind the fence, cracking unceremoniously. "Eh-heh-heh-hem!" Baljeet's much rounder face appeared in the gap a full head shorter than Buford. He glared up in annoyance. "Buford, if we don't hurry we'll miss the opening ceremony!"

The larger boy rolled his eyes. "Alright, alright, don't get your briefs in a twist. Later Isabella!" And with that the duo was gone.

Isabella hardly noticed, her mind racing. Buford's surprise visit had turned out to be just the fortuitous kick in the pants she'd needed. If Phineas really had no interest in her, there was nothing she could do. But if he was just oblivious, there was at least one thing she hadn't tried yet. How did Abuela's story go again?

"_I was going to say no, but then I heard he was planning to ask out that rascal Maria if I turned him down again. So instead we went, and fell in love."_

Isabella grinned mischievously, tapping her fingers together. "I think I know what _I'll_ be doing tomorrow," she cackled.


End file.
